Amor Ex Machina
by Reevsie
Summary: After Panchaea, life goes on: and progress never stops. Post-ending, M for language. Pritchard/Jensen.
1. On Solitude

A muted orange light seeped into the dark corridors of Sarif Industries; it was almost three a.m., but the flickering illumination of computer terminals still crept out of the tech lab on the second floor, where the door hung slightly ajar. The quiet, steady whir of security cameras was the only sound in the building, as regular as the breathing of some great sleeping beast. Come the morning, it would awaken to growl and paw at the world outside, but for now it slept, albeit with one eye open.

Elsewhere in the building, something stirred. Adam Jensen, the company's security chief, emerged from his office, rubbing his neck with one hand as he closed the door behind him. He stretched, arching his shoulders back and twisting his neck to loosen the few organic muscles he had left. All the augments in the world couldn't alleviate the cramps that resulted from prolonged office hours, and he grimaced as some of his vertebrae cracked loudly in the quiet.

Leaning against the railing at the edge of the mezzanine, Jensen looked down at the lobby two floors below. The yellowed light of the city picked out reflective surfaces with a dull lustre, but the six irregular pillars that dominated the space stood dark and foreboding; unfathomable sentinels waiting for the end of the world. It wasn't here yet, but their sombre, knowing eyes saw it cresting the horizon.

Gazing morosely at the scene below, Adam was afflicted with a thoughtful melancholy that was not entirely unpleasant. He could feel the emptiness as acutely as if it was a weight in his palm: the conspicuous absence of people in a place where people always should be, expressed as an emotional afterimage on the backs of his eyelids. Loneliness filtered out of the air and into his lungs, before working its way to the tips of his dimly gleaming fingers. Scrutinising them, he wondered if this was how it felt to be the last person on Earth, haunted by the people that were no longer there.

With a low sigh, he pushed himself back from the railing and turned towards the stairs. His movement was silent, honed by years of practice and specialised augmentations. In the back of his mind, he was vaguely aware of a desire to preserve the spell of the early hours: that peculiar suspension of time that only occurs when we know we should be sleeping, but consciousness refuses to give ground.

Reaching the bottom of the first flight of stairs, Jensen saw the light escaping from the computer technician's office. For a moment, he was inexplicably vexed; resentful of having his solitude impinged upon, and unsettled that someone had been so close while he mused on the quiet intimacies of existence – as if he had been broadcasting his thoughts on a frequency he thought secure, but now found had been compromised. He pulled at the door, and it swung outward without a sound, allowing more orange light to spill into the dimness.

'Pritch—'

He cut the utterance short. Sarif Industries' top computer technician was asleep at his desk, his head pillowed on arms in front of him. On many levels, Adam was unsurprised: the computer tech was practically nocturnal – and had he not been working late tonight himself? Both of them had been under a lot of pressure lately, and extra hours was the only way to keep on top of it all, but a small voice of worry nagged at the back of his mind. Moving silently around the desk, Jensen then crouched down, to bring his eyes level with those of the sleeping Francis Pritchard. What he saw forced him to acknowledge the nugget of concern buried deep behind his typically cool demeanour.

Sleep had smoothed the eternally present frown from Frank's forehead, and without its usual sneer, Adam could see how the technician's angular face might be considered attractive. Such a thought would normally have brought him up short - and caused him to question his sanity - but tonight it seemed unremarkable; a dispassionate appraisal. The technician's ponytail had loosened, and strands of fine black hair had slipped out to fall around his face. He could have been a twenty-one-year-old student, pulling an all-nighter before a test, but for the deep purple shadows below his eyes.

They had both been pushing themselves, he knew that. Adam also knew that his body could take it. Now that he was augmented to the nth degree, he needed less sleep, and he didn't have to eat as much. Having less biological mass had its drawbacks, of course: he'd never been a lightweight before, but now one or two stiff drinks would have him out for the count. Looking at the technician's drawn face, Jensen understood the effect that his lifestyle would have on someone, well, on someone—

'Human,' he murmured, his hand twitching forward as he resisted an urge to brush the loose hairs from Frank's face. They swayed gently with his quiet breathing, granting the merest suggestion of how he might look with his hair down; how he might look without his defences up.

Adam stood, a faint line of worry etched into his brow. Casting his eyes about the chaotic office, he found both pen and paper, and wrote in block capitals:

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF PRITCHARD. WE NEED YOU.

DON'T BE STUPID.

Placing the note at the base of Pritchard's computer screen, where it was sure to be found, the security chief turned to leave. Frank gave a low moan in his sleep as his colleague closed the door, the latch clicking loudly in the muffled atmosphere, and, not for the first time, Adam Jensen was quietly amazed by the utter vulnerability of the human race.


	2. On Anger

Groaning, Frank shifted in his chair, fighting off the wave of consciousness that threatened to inflict reality upon him. Even through the fog of sleep, he could feel aches and cramps all over his body, and was loathe to open his eyes – so he didn't. For a moment, he just listened. The whirring, beeping and humming of servers surrounded him, but gave little clue as to his location: his apartment sounded much the same. It was the unmistakable and utterly infuriating scraping sound of windows being cleaned that finally allowed him to place himself. He had fallen asleep at his desk. Again.

Groaning some more, he pushed himself upright, rubbing his eyes as he stood. Still bleary with sleep - and lack thereof - the technician meandered out of his office door, heading for the open area at the back of the building. He shot a venomous and entirely characteristic look at the hapless caretaker that had roused him, before slipping through the first set of double doors.

Outside, the first light of day limned the upper margins of Detroit, and for once the behemoth of a city lost its orange sheen. Instead, it was a landscape of grey silhouettes, edged in pink and gold; as yet undisturbed by the pervasive wail of sirens, unpunctuated by gunshots. It was peaceful. Leaning against the railings overlooking the helipad, Frank sighed deeply, reaching up to tease the band out of his hair. A dark curtain fell to either side of his face, shifting slightly in the faint breeze. He ran a hand through it absentmindedly as he looked up, watching the faint pink flush in the sky spread outwards, burnishing wisps of cloud with an aurous edge. The morning unfolded itself, and Frank watched in silence as the face of heaven began to blush.

He was tired. He was tired in his bones. Exhausted, really. It had been three months since Panchaea, and Sarif Industries was still hurtling onward at light speed. With a worldwide near-catastrophe placed squarely at the feet of the Humanity Front, funding for augmentations and their development had been pouring in; progress was not merely expected, it was _demanded_. A second laboratory had been opened nearby, specialising in the new sub-field of BIOs: biologically integrated and organic augmentations. It was a whole new venture, the next step along the swiftly converging paths of technology and biology: augmentations designed to grow with you, to be part of you from childhood - maybe even birth. It made Frank uneasy. Ingenious it might be, but somewhere along the line an element of choice was being lost. He thought of Jensen. How could he not? Megan Reed had dropped off the map after Panchaea, and there was no telling what she had taken with her. Was the next stage of human evolution to stem from the behaviour of an unscrupulous ex-girlfriend?

_Behind every great man…_

A humourless smile crossed Frank's face as the bitter thought flitted through his mind. He had no idea what had happened down in Panchaea, no idea what had transpired under such an anonymous weight of water. Adam had never talked about it. Adam. Even in his head, the name echoed oddly; an unfamiliar intimacy. He couldn't seem to reconcile his image of Jensen, stern and serious and frustratingly stubborn, with an Adam. Adam liked cereal and had a bizarre but endearing hobby. Adam watched bad talk-show TV in his pyjamas when he was ill. Adam had a family. Jensen was… Jensen.

Stepping back from the railings, Pritchard shook his head, running his hands through his hair to tie it back up. Whatever _had _happened, Jensen was walking around with a weight on his shoulders that had nothing to do with his augmented arms. It wouldn't be inaccurate to say that he could be cold, maybe even grim, but lately the man had been positively _morose. _He wasn't the only one with a raft of responsibility on his head. Frank had spent the last two months painstakingly building an inter-lab intranet, with a whole host of new security measures, _and _monitoring twice as much traffic as usual for security breaches, especially by the new personnel. If Sarif's golden boy was struggling, so was everyone else.

With scowl firmly in place, Pritchard turned to go back to his desk, but first he needed some coffee.

**‡**

Flickering images played out on Jensen's computer screen in a surreal double time, multiple camera feeds running simultaneously. It was something any security guard could do, and something several of his underlings were paid to do, but watching the recordings soothed him. Knowing that Sarif Industries kept running, even when he wasn't there, was reassuring. He watched as employees left the building one by one, all scurrying away, all with somewhere better to be. He saw the last visitor to Pritchard's office leave the door ajar, watched the night shift security arrive, and then stared at the empty corridor until he saw his own shadow emerge from the gloom and stalk silently away.

All seemed well, and the security chief relaxed backwards into his chair, his observation becoming perfunctory as he skimmed over the last of the recordings from the early hours. He was just about to turn off the feeds when something caught his eye, and he slowed the playback to a normal speed.

Just after six that morning, as the security guards were changing shifts, Pritchard had finally left his office. Jensen watched as the technician made his way out to the helipad, and sheer curiosity caused him to switch to the footage from the outdoor camera. There might have been a time when he'd have done so out of suspicion, but it was long gone. At some point, the computer tech had earned himself a grudging respect: it might have been when he'd agreed to assign a security detail to the house of Michelle Walters, with no explanation, or it might just have been the catch in his voice when he thought he could be saying goodbye for good.

Jensen continued to observe as the video showed Frank walking out to the edge of the railings and leaning there, before pulling his hair loose. Even as a line of concern returned to his brow, Jensen couldn't help but note that Frank's posture was exactly the same as his own had been, looking down pensively to the lobby only a few hours before. He vaguely wondered what the technician had been thinking about. For the next five minutes the security chief watched the growing bloom of colour in the sky, inadvertently mimicking the digital incarnation of Pritchard, a reflective expression on his face. On some semi-conscious level, a nebulous feeling of voyeurism nagged at him, along with an unsettling sense of intimacy, as if he was actually there, alone with Frank. When his door burst open, he stopped and quickly minimised the video, an inexplicable flush of shame budding in his chest.

'Jensen. What the hell is this?'

An enraged and very much corporeal Francis Pritchard had suddenly joined Jensen in his office. He was even nice enough to close the door behind him, albeit loudly.

'Good morning, Francis,' Jensen intoned.

Pritchard ignored him, instead throwing a much crumpled scrap of paper onto the younger man's desk.

'What is the meaning of this? If you are implying that I've not been doing my job properly, then I'll have you take it up with me in person, rather than—'

'Pritchard.'

'Speaking of: who gave you permission to—'

'Pritchard.'

The security chief looked down to the offending item on his desk. It was, of course, the note he had left for the technician earlier. He resisted the urge to sigh; he might have expected that his irascible colleague would take the expression of concern entirely the wrong way. In the light of day, Jensen even questioned his own motives. Why had he thought it would be a good idea?

Looking back up, he took in Frank's face in an instant. Even the angry red colour of his cheeks couldn't hide the purple shadows that still lingered. He looked as exhausted as Jensen suspected he was, and he'd clearly been working himself up in his office for some time.

'Pritchard, I wasn't… I didn't mean to—' and this time Jensen _did _sigh, 'I wasn't _criticising _you.'

He considered activating his CASIE implant, but he wasn't sure whether Pritchard would know – more than that, he didn't want to manipulate the man. It didn't seem right.

'Really?' Pritchard spat, 'It was what, then? Worried about my health are you?'

'Yeah.' Jensen said levelly, rising to face his counterpart, who was now standing with arms crossed on the other side of the desk. 'You look like shit. When did you last sleep properly? Hell, when did you last eat something that wasn't from a vending machine, Pritchard?'

Jensen was beginning to get irritated himself. Pritchard was just so defensive, all the time, and God _damn _if it was totally unnecessary. The man was the best there was: he'd beaten some of the most infamous hackers in the world, and cracked the most complex security systems on the planet. Why was he so insecure?

'I mean it Pritchard. If I could pull rank on you I would. You can't keep living like this – no one can.'

The technician himself was still silent, apparently surprised - but even as Adam watched, his eyes began to narrow.

'Except _you,_ Jensen. You may think that being Sarif's mechanical lapdog makes you _special_, above criticism, but you're not. You're not super-human, so drop the high and mighty act.' The tech's voice was dripping with a venom too extreme for the situation, and his words had an air of premeditation.

'Pritchard, what is this abou—'

'You were mortal once too, remember?' the technician spat, advancing. The desk was still between them, but Pritchard planted his hands on it, leaning forward and glaring upwards into Jensen's face. 'You _died, _andyou _came back_ – that doesn't make you some fucking Jesus Christ saviour: it makes you a medical success. You didn't get the girl, remember? And you left Faridah to _die_,' he hissed.

Pritchard wasn't shouting, but his voice was low and dangerous and sharp as a knife. Jensen was mute.

'Sarif owns more of you than you do: you're a glorified company car, and in six months you'll be obsolete. All that pain, all that suffering you wear like a badge of honour – it'll be second-rate tomorrow and worthless this time next year.' He withdrew, half turning away, glowering at Jensen from the corner of his eye. '_Megan_ just traded up.'

The silence that followed was profound. Pritchard's heated stare met impenetrable shades, and the weight of emotion in the air made it hard to breathe. The door slammed, and the room shivered; in the quiet, the sound of something beginning to break could clearly be heard. The air was filled with static, and the echoes of things that can never be unsaid.

* * *

_Author's Note: Thank you for all the positive feedback; I'm aware that my writing can be somewhat, uhm... florid, at times, shall we say. I actually used cognizance in a sentence earlier, then realised that I'm neither a dictionary nor an Edwardian, merely English._


	3. On Loyalty

'Adam, come and see me in my office.'

A pause, while Jensen considered that hearing voices in one's head is typically a symptom of advanced and disturbing mental illness.

'Yes boss.'

**‡**

David Sarif's office was a dimly lit cacophony of gold and bronze hues, and the late afternoon sun cast it in hazy, elongated shapes. Sarif himself paced lazily back and forth beside the large window, periodically tossing a baseball from one hand to the other.

'Now Adam, I know you've been doing a lot of office work lately,' the senior man said, before turning to face his companion, 'and I know it's been getting to you.'

He advanced across the room, absentmindedly dropping the baseball as he leant against the front of his desk. He looked intently into the face of his security chief for several moments, but Jensen didn't so much as shift under the scrutiny, remaining stock still, arms crossed. Sarif frowned.

'You never took any time off after Panchaea, son, and I know that was—' he searched for the right word, 'that was stressful. For everyone involved. You know what an asset you are to this company, and—'

'I'm fine, boss. Thanks for the concern.' Jensen's voice was a flat monotone. 'What is it you called me for?'

Sarif pulled a face, crossing his arms. His brows drew together in consternation, but Jensen's terse mood made his expression even more unfathomable than usual.

'Well Adam, as I'm sure you're aware, things have been moving incredibly fast since the events on Panchaea. Sarif Industries is a top player, sure, but we're at risk of falling behind other companies who are willing to be more… flexible with their ethics.'

With this Sarif stood up straight, producing the baseball from the æther, and began to toss it from palm to palm again. It was body language that Jensen knew well, and it meant that his boss was uncomfortable with what he was saying. Jensen kept the derision from his face by sheer force of will: it hadn't just been Megan who had betrayed him, Sarif had let it happen. His displays of fatherly affection rang as hollow as his talk of ethics.

'Anyway, I want you to do some _research_ at Page Industries tomorrow night, find out what they're up to. Apparently they've taken BIOs to a whole new level.'

'Corporate espionage, boss? You think what they're doing might be illegal?' Jensen queried, his curiosity piqued despite his severe mood. Pritchard's words still rang in his head: Sarif's mechanical lapdog. _Well then, woof woof, _he thought grimly.

'I'm almost sure of it. I want you to head over there, and find out what you can.' Sarif took to the seat behind his desk, 'Get out of the office, you know?'

'Anything in particular I should be looking for?'

'I couldn't tell you; I've no idea what to expect myself.' Sarif looked up at his head of security, genuine worry in his eyes. He was rolling the baseball back and forth on the desk with the heel of his hand, and looked like he might say something else, but thought better of it.

'Adam, I know things have been tough, with Megan and all.' He was watching Jensen's face carefully, to see if the mention of Dr Reed had any effect – it had been months now, but his behaviour had been near obsessive before Panchaea. There might have been a twitch of augmented fingers. 'But you need to move on, and stop brooding on the past. It's not doing you any good. Go out for a drink with Pritchard or something. You two have been getting on lately, right?'

That, at least, managed to elicit a smirk on Jensen's part. It was an unbalanced expression that filled Sarif with an unease he could not only feel in his gut but taste in the back of his throat. He had never known two people to have such a consistently fractious relationship; asked for his opinion, he'd have said something had to give, but as yet nothing had.

'Is that everything, boss?'

Sarif didn't reply straight away, but spent a moment studying Adam's face. Something was wrong, perhaps even very wrong. He looked… crooked, like an iceberg that had ruptured at its core, and was slowly and inexorably falling apart. What had happened between him and Pritchard? Even if his two best men didn't often see eye to eye, the simple fact was that they spent a lot of time together. They knew each other well, after a fashion, and it was all too easy to use that knowledge harmfully – and sometimes Pritchard didn't know when to stop.

'Yeah. Take the rest of the day off, son. I'll have someone pick you up from your apartment tomorrow night.'

Jensen turned to leave, stalking towards the door.

'Adam,' Sarif called to his back, voice stern, causing Jensen to pause in his tracks. 'Take care of yourself. We need you.'

Adam nodded once, brusquely, and without turning around. Sarif watched him leave with a feeling of disquiet gnawing at his edges, and a molten core of guilt in his stomach. He knew that in many ways he had misused his security chief, and he had been surprised when the transmission from Panchaea had favoured his own agenda. Jensen was loyal, he supposed. It was why he had struggled so much with Megan's betrayal, and why even now his jaw tensed at her name. He was a good man; he had suffered, and for that, Sarif was sorry. He was afraid that after tomorrow night, he would be sorrier still.

* * *

_Author's Note: Yes. If you were wondering, I _did _feel like a terrible person after the end of the last chapter. I'm hoping to update every week or so, university notwithstanding, so please don't fret about short chapters; progress will happen, I promise._


	4. On Abomination

It was fortunate, Jensen supposed, that Sarif had summoned him when he did. After Pritchard's outburst, he had been unable to move for sheer black rage, remaining motionless for a full fifteen minutes before his infolink crackled. His anger was dark and stygian; it sunk through him, pooling in a mire of venomous, piceous sludge somewhere at the bottom of his gut. Staring blindly through his shades, Jensen tasted it: its bitterness, its colour. It was an anger he remembered.

He had broken his mirror again, and his apartment was wrecked. It hadn't helped. Having gone home, as per Sarif's orders, Adam had proceeded to break anything breakable, regardless of its value: monetary or sentimental. His anger remained, deep-seated and entrenched. It was no red mist, to be banished with violence and retribution. It was heavy and malign; an ire one lived with, as faithful as Dr Johnson's proverbial black dog. Above all, it was loyal, destructive, and entirely self-directed.

Jensen stood motionless as the lift descended through the Chiron building. It was impossible to tell through his shade implants, but his eyes were closed. He had slept deeply the night before, exhausted by a potency of emotion he was unused to, and had woken with a heavy, familiar sediment in his lungs. Drifting into unconsciousness, he had dared only the vaguest hope that he would feel better in the morning. He did not, and he recognised the gnawing, conscious unease that signalled an underlying turmoil, likely to spill over at any moment. It was the same breed of rage that had driven him to his obsession with saving Megan, even when events had moved to a higher stage of cosmic theatre entirely. It had taken half a globe, a complete betrayal, and the overthrow of an international conspiracy to assuage Adam's guilt last time. He grimaced as the lift doors opened.

The Page Industries lab he was supposed to be casing tonight was local, in Detroit, and Jensen was grateful in a quiet, faintly echoing corner of his soul. He was arriving by car, with an anonymous, forgettable driver who had every chance of not getting shot in the head. He had never admitted it to anyone, but Faridah haunted him, and not even the deafening noise of a helicopter drowned out her ghost. It occurred to him that he had never admitted anything worth knowing to anyone still living, except—

'Megan,' he muttered softly. 'Damn.'

Fulgurant images came unbidden to his head: the colourless room, Megan's scared face, her backpedalling - but most of all the acute sense of joy melting into anger; that painful, pitiless slide of hope, as palpable as an anchor attached to the heart. The culmination of his near-death, his renewal, his obsession – the risks he took, with other people's lives as well as his own – all of it boiled down to a single moment when he knew, just _knew_, that it meant nothing to her. And then he'd chosen the transmission that would allow her to do whatever she pleased with her research. He was sick with it.

'Adam,' Sarif's voice broke into his painful reverie, 'you know the drill tonight.'

'Yes boss.'

A pause, the silent sound of hesitation.

'Keep your guard up tonight, son.' Jensen could _hear_ Sarif toying with his baseball. 'Pritchard's on comms. Play nice.'

Adam grunted affirmation, and his infolink crackled into silence. Outside the tinted windows, the ghostly shapes of warehouses slipped by as one by one the streetlamps dwindled away, and the empty industrial estate became a forlorn no man's land; a vaguery of grey shapes in a dark night. The car pulled up a few blocks away from the lab, and Jensen stepped out into his element, already assessing his surroundings. It came so naturally to him; he might have been born to do it.

_No,_ a voice in his head echoed, _it's what you were __**built**__ to do._

If possible, Jensen's grim expression became grimmer, but some lingering remnant of dry humour rasped at him: at least the voice in his head was his this time.

'Jensen?'

He really needed to find a way to turn off his infolink.

'Pritchard.'

There was a moment of silence, and Jensen listened to the almost imperceptible buzz of static on the line. When the technician spoke again, his tone was all business, but it only served to emphasise the shade of tremulous anger that had been in his voice.

'You're about five hundred yards away from the lab; security system's pretty advanced, but I can disable some of it remotely. Give me some time and I might be able to access their cam footage. Judging by the encryption levels… this is something big, Jensen.'

'Got it,' was the security chief's terse reply. The static played in his head a few seconds longer, as if Pritchard was deliberating over saying something more, but a harsh crackle signalled his decision. _Good,_ Adam thought. His anger was tenebrous, and Jensen knew that it had been simmering long before Pritchard thought to provoke it, but it was hazily attached to the technician nonetheless. Hearing the man's voice – without any choice in the matter – was not helping his focus.

The laboratory building itself was indistinguishable from the other innominate warehouses in the complex, but Jensen approached it cautiously, seeking a surreptitious entrance. Spying a ladder to the roof, he moved deftly from shadow to shadow; stealth no longer a conscious effort, but an unthinking gait. He found a vent leading inwards, much as he had expected, and mused blackly on the ubiquitous security flaw, and what a boon it had been to him. Manoeuvring himself into the seemingly impossibly small space, he briefly considered that he ought to update Pritchard. He didn't. It might have been immature, but he didn't feel like 'playing nice'. The man could see through his eyes anyway. It was quite an invasion of privacy, really.

Moving through the cramped tunnel system, Jensen stopped at each grill to scope out the building. A warren of prefabs had been constructed within the large open space, each with a red number painted on heavy double doors. As far as he could tell, there was no human security presence, but a number of cameras dotted the walls, their digital eyes roving back and forth amongst the squat, closely placed constructions.

After consulting the readouts on his shades, and establishing that he would be out of sight of any cameras, Jensen dropped out of an open vent in the wall. Landing behind one of the prefabs, he immediately tucked himself against its back wall, before peering around the corner, swearing, and pulling sharply back.

'Pritchard, we have—'

'Rovers, I know. I can see their security systems now; accessing them is another matter. Give me a minute,' the technician responded, sounding distracted.

'Great,' Adam muttered, 'Take your sweet time, _Francis_.' It was an unfair, petty jab: God knows the computer tech had saved his ass more than once, and under extreme pressure. Jensen's infolink buzzed quietly, and he could_ feel_ the venomous glare that Pritchard was directing his way. Something bittersweet flickered in the back of his mind: the guilty pleasure of hurting someone you care about during an argument, a mixture of regret and relish. His infolink crackled out, and the security chief shook his head sharply. His focus was off tonight.

He waited a few more seconds to see if Pritchard made any breakthroughs, but when the internal silence continued, Adam looked around for alternative routes. He could hear the steady mechanical rumblings of at least two mobile robots as they patrolled on the other side of the prefab. The low buildings were arranged in a rough circle around the edge of the warehouse, with another cluster in the middle, and an open space between; thick ribbons of cable ran everywhere, loose across the floor and strapped tightly to the walls. Jensen's eyes absentmindedly followed the path of a cluster as he contemplated his next move, and he snapped to attention as he realised that the wires ran straight up to and through a glassless window into the building. Crouching, he moved over, and cautiously raised his head to look in.

Inside, the prefab looked like a standard lab. Specimen tables dominated the central space, cluttered with paraphernalia, and cupboards and complex equipment stood in a jumble around the perimeter. From the looks of things, the operation had been going for quite some time: one entire wall was covered in scraps of paper and printouts of news stories regarding augmentations. Vaulting silently into the room, Jensen took a closer look – it was nothing he hadn't already heard about on Picus, but seeing the stories here made him shiver. He remembered his conversation with Sarif: how uneasy he had seemed, 'almost certain' that something illegal was going on. It didn't bode well.

Looking around, Jensen saw that this particular room was flush against another, and had a connecting doorway into what looked to be a security hub, judging by the number of computers. _Convenient, _he reflected. Tonight was going well. Slinking to the doorway, Adam poked his head around. This prefab was windowless, so he needn't worry about alerting the sensitive rovers outside, and the only camera was covering the entrance to the inner ring. All he needed to do was hack into these computers, shut everything down, and he'd be able to investigate at will. Easy. He moved over to the first desk and began tapping at the keyboard.

He was just about to be shut out of the network for the second time when the computer beeped at him, the screen flickered, and the machine began to reboot. When it hummed back to life, it bypassed the login screen and went straight to security access. Jensen blinked momentarily, surprised, and then static burst in his ear.

'Don't say I never do anything for you,' Pritchard murmured, still sounding preoccupied. Out of the corner of his eye, Jensen saw the other two computers in the room flicker, before they too opened up to the security access screen.

'Thanks, Pritchard,' he rumbled. The tech hadn't been lying about the complicated encryption; Adam doubted he'd have been able to crack it himself.

Pritchard hummed quietly in acknowledgement before terminating the connection. Jensen moved between the computers, disabling all the cameras, and then his two mechanical companions outside. As the sound of their engines died away, near total silence took over, only broken by Adam's steady breathing and the gentle whir of the computers in the room. Isolation hit him like a cold wind, turning the acrimony in his gut to ice; it weighed him down, and made him wish he had something to say, or someone to say it to.

He grunted brusquely, frustrated by the persistence of his disconsolate mood, especially when he was supposed to be working. Forcing his mind to the task at hand, Jensen decided to take a look around the labs in the centre, all of which had a three-foot-high number one emblazoned on their doors. If he was going to find anything, it would likely be there.

Stepping gingerly out into the inner ring, the security chief approached one of the stationary robots, kicking it gently with a boot to make sure it was well and truly gridlocked. It juddered slightly before settling back into its immobile state. Satisfied, Jensen approached a set of double doors, which split smoothly apart to reveal a much more substantial lab.

Lit only dimly by orange emergency lights, the entire building, larger than any of the other prefabs in the warehouse, was a molasses of orange and brown shadows. It looked much like the other lab, with papers, tools and documents scattered everywhere, but in its centre was a large round pillar that ran seamlessly from floor to ceiling. This might have been unremarkable, but that the upper two thirds of the tube were translucent, and lit from below by a spotlight that turned the burnt orange innards to a sparkling amber. Something was suspended in the tube, an unidentifiable mass cast in brown and gold. Jensen drew closer, oddly fascinated.

'Jensen,' Pritchard mumbled in his ear. 'What _is _that?'

Jensen couldn't rightly say. Somehow, his eyes refused to fix on the shape. Trying to define it was like trying to conceive of an image in more than three dimensions: something in his mind balked. Circling slowly around the pillar, understanding grasped at him, and snakes of intemerate horror began to curl their way up his spine, turning him cold. There was something familiar about this curve, that outline, the hunched posture. Some primal part of him screamed denial, but he had seen first-hand what humanity could do to itself, and a tiny piece of him went eternally cold, knowing that he was unsurprised.

It was a foetus. Overlarge and grotesquely deformed, it hung there, a proud exhibition of the abhorrence mankind could create. Parts of it were completely mangled, and pieces of twisted metal protruded, gunmetal grey, from what might have been limbs. At the back of its neck, below the heavy, round head, were a series of metal pins, clearly supposed to run in a straight series down the spine; only three had stayed in place, the rest skewed sideways, half covered with sallow skin. That was not the worst, however. One eye was obscured by a heavy, lopsided brow that had swollen shut over it, whilst the other glinted, metallic and cold in a pouch of flesh. Below, its face was twisted in a horrendous wail, the mouth a gaping maw stretched wider than any human mouth ever should. A streak of metal had torn through the skin of the jaw, bursting through the soft tissue with the force of the scream: and that's what it was. It was an agonised, tormented expression only ever captured once in all of humanity's existence, in Edvard Munch's _The Scream_ – it was that and so much worse, because it was innocent.

Jensen fought down gorge, and tried not to retch. Pritchard's voice whispered in his head, too quiet for him to make out the words. It might have been 'my God'. With a force of will, Jensen wrenched his eyes away, desperate to look at something else, but sure that he would be seeing that scream whenever he closed his eyes for the rest of his life. His gaze dropped down, to a small golden plaque set against the pillar.

#003 – Kubrick  
30 Weeks

His legs gave out, and Adam stumbled heavily to the floor. The implications hit him like a barrage, and he gagged violently, spitting bile onto the ground. Thirty weeks. Babies could survive out of the womb after twenty-four. _It might have lived_. The idea that such a wretched creature might have drawn breath – might have been aware of its own existence for even a second – appalled him. Had it screamed? Had it torn its own flesh with its howling? But it was not the unimaginable cruelty that shook him to his core, terrible though it was. It was the name.

'Kubrick. Pritchard… They… they called it—' he choked painfully on his words. When Pritchard spoke his own voice was shaky and weak.

'Kubrick. Yes. What is it, Jensen?'

'Kubrick was… Kubrick was mine and Megan's dog.'

The words hung on the line, inevitable conclusions being drawn in the silence.

'Jensen…' There was nothing Pritchard could say, but his voice was gentle, laden with pity, and lacking all of its usual bite. Adam heard him take a long shuddering breath. 'God Jensen, I'm sorry.'

Staggering to his feet, the security chief shook his head violently from side to side, turning his back on the aberrant spectacle behind him. He began to rifle through papers on desks, picking up PDAs with shaking hands, his mind desperately seizing for some other explanation.

'No,' he muttered. 'No, she wouldn't do this. Not Megan. Not this.'

'Jensen, don't,' Pritchard said sharply, but he was ignored.

Adam moved across the room to examine a pinboard covered in research notes, pausing over photos of subjects one and two. They were little more than mangles of flesh and metal, with no discernible human features. Pulling a note from the wall below them, Jensen began to read:

_Specimens one and two were resounding failures, but at the insistence of Dr Reed, a third attempt was made to augment a human foetus. With some ingenious genetic modifications courtesy of the Doctor herself, specimen number three, Kubrick, fared much better.  
It seems initial plans to outright clone the DNA of Patient X will not be sufficient, and extensive genetic modification will be necessary, possible variations on the structure of the…_

The note fluttered to the ground at Adam's feet, and he leaned heavily against the wall, suddenly exhausted. Even now, some part of him had hoped that maybe, somehow, it had all been a misunderstanding; that Megan had been acting on some plan, some principle that he just couldn't see. She had always been prone to getting caught up in her research, but this was… surely there was no perspective that could ever make such abominations acceptable? _What has she become? _He wondered. _What have __**I **__become? Where did it all get so fucked up?_

'Adam, time to call it in son,' Sarif's voice rang, harsh in his ears after Pritchard's subdued tones.

_He knew, _Jensen realised. _He damn well knew._ Rage erupted inside him and he swung around, violently sweeping his arm across the top of a table, sending electronics and papers crashing to the floor, before bringing his fists down hard. There was no pain as the glass top shattered, only a dull reverberation. He resented it, the lack of pain. Without pain, how could he even claim to be alive?

'Adam,' Sarif warned, his tone that reserved for a wayward dog that growls at guests.

'You knew,' Jensen spat to the empty room. 'You knew this was Megan's work.'

'I… yeah. I did son – but I had no idea it was anything like this. I never—'

'You never meant for this to happen, sure,' Adam's voice was mercilessly bitter, each word a dagger, 'It was never supposed to end this way,' he mocked.

A harsh bark of humourless laughter escaped Jensen's lips, his entire body quivering as he seethed a black oozing rage that was directed at everything. All of it. The whole fucking charade. Sarif began to say something, but was quickly cut off, and Jensen heard faint, angry voices. Sarif must have been down in Pritchard's office, and getting an earful, it seemed. It was Pritchard that spoke next.

'I'm sending a car to pick you up, Jensen.' He sounded angry – angrier than usual. It was somehow more comforting than his earlier sympathy, but there was nothing that would appease Jensen in his current state.

'Don't bother,' he growled. 'I'll walk.'

* * *

_Author's Note: Oh shiiiiii-, who saw that coming? Sorry for the major hiatus: life came knocking, the way it sometimes will.  
_


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